


les pavots

by b3rryjunki3



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragon Sett, Falling In Love, M/M, Porn With Plot, Researcher Aphelios, Trans Aphelios, Trans Male Character, right now it's all plot but the porn is coming soon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26601073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b3rryjunki3/pseuds/b3rryjunki3
Summary: Aphelios is ordered by the Lunari House of Draconic Study to investigate a reportedly abandoned dragon's den in the mountains surrounding their village. Miraculously, being caught by the dragon doesn't result in his immediate death- instead, the two strike up an unexpected, tentative friendship.After the dragon makes a deal with Aphelios allowing him to continue studying without threat of being killed, Aphelios comes to realize two different things; one, there's only so long you can keep secrets from a dragon, and two, falling for that dragon is a lot easier than he would have guessed. Especially when the dragon reveals he can shapeshift into a very, VERY attractive human man.Inevitably, Aphelios' feelings start getting in the way of their deal, and he makes his way to the dragon's den day in and day out for increasingly selfish reasons. But can he really be blamed? Dragon or not, this is the one being on earth aside from his own twin who really understands him. Who wants to know him.Who thinks he's beautiful, just the way he is.
Relationships: Aphelios/Sett (League of Legends)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	les pavots

Aphelios knows a thing or two about dragons. He knows how territorial they are, how viciously protective of both home and hoard they can be. Killing a dragon is a feat only found in fables, the self-titled heroes always big broad men with a deadly sword swing. Aphelios has always regarded these tales with a polite disinterest. Killing a dragon is a suicide mission for people chasing status, whether from desperation or arrogance varies case by case. Sometimes it’s both. Aphelios has no need for status. He has no need for the riches of a felled dragon’s hoard, and  _ definitely  _ no need to be the center of attention in any capacity. He’s happy enough studying dragons from afar, fastidiously recording flight patterns, eating habits, hibernations, on and on and on. Dragons are fascinating creatures to him- even if he were a bigger man with a meaner swing, he would be loath to end any of their lives.

Which is why his mood is so sour today- he’s been ordered by the Lunari House of Draconic Study to go investigate an abandoned dragon’s den. By himself. Aphelios trusts them, of course, practically grew up on their tiny campus on the west side of the township, but he can’t help but feel apprehension grow with every step up the mountainside. In the twenty-five years he’s been alive he’s known to  _ never  _ go into a den on his lonesome. He’s not unarmed, of course, but he doesn’t exactly present an intimidating figure. His twin sister Alune likes to joke that he’s more leg than man.

The Lunari House had assured and reassured Aphelios that the dragon previously occupying the high mountain cave hadn’t been seen in months, and was presumed dead. Aphelios knew from first hand observation that this particular dragon- a huge male Obsidian- liked to travel around for weeks at a time on the hunt for particularly valuable treasures. Presumably, he was confident no one was stupid enough to enter his den while he was gone and mess with his hoard. No matter how large it grew, he would notice even a single coin going missing.

_ No one’s stupid enough but me, _ Aphelios grumbles in his head, panting slightly in the thin air. He pauses to take in the scenery and catch his breath. The mountain slopes beautifully around him, tough green grass, dotted with blushing clover-blossoms and gaudy tufts of dandelion, blankets the rise and fall of the lush landscape. The pine trees here are spindly but stretch just as ambitiously towards the clear blue sky as their more robust brethren in the valley. It’s nothing less than gorgeous. Aphelios wouldn’t trade it for all the treasure in the den he is  _ definitely _ going to somehow die in.

Speaking of, he can see it off in the distance by now, a little shadowy spot in the gently imposing face of the tallest ridge. He picks up the pace, carefully monitoring his breath as he jogs. Dragons tend to be more nocturnal in nature, and though Aphelios has plenty of daylight left, he’s taking absolutely no chances. It takes about ten minutes of jogging before he reaches the ridge, another five to scale it, and then he’s in.

He’s standing all alone in the entryway of a dragon’s den.

Straining over the hammering of his heart in his ears, Aphelios listens carefully for any motion within the depths of the widely yawning cave. It’s harder to take deep breaths up here to calm his erratic pulse. Hearing nothing, he takes one cautious step forward, then another, and another, until he’s deep enough to come across what can only be described as the shore of an ocean of treasure.

Aphelios is frankly dazzled, frozen in his already stilted tracks at the sight of so...  _ much _ . Gold, silver, bronze, a thousand winking stars of jewels in wildflower hues. They spill over each other, flow in and out of dented helmets and chest plates, greedily lay claim to all manner of swords and flails and axes. Strings of pearls and chain finery lay like dormant snakes among the great glittering mass. Further back Aphelios can see larger objects, gilded furniture and marble statues and extravagant foreign pottery. He fumbles in his pockets, starstruck, for his parchment and charcoal sticks and furiously begins his sketches and chicken-scratch notes.

He is, stupidly, just as he suspected himself to be, too absorbed in the majesty of it all to notice who’s just made a surprise entrance behind him.

“ _ Who is this _ ?”

Aphelios almost screams. The only thing that stops him is his heart, which promptly dies and guns it for heaven, rocketing itself right up his throat. He turns around so fast his feet don’t even move in time- he twists his legs around each other and falls, flailing, right on his ass, scrambling backwards and breaking into a cold sweat as he makes eye contact with the owner of the deep, growling voice.

They are also, as Aphelios’ luck would have it, the owner of the hoard he’s just scooted his skinny little butt into.

_ Tell Alune I love her, and please plant some nice flowers on my grave _ , Aphelios thinks faintly. He’s going to die. He’s  _ so _ going to die. He’s going to get torn to pieces because some Lunari House old farts thought they knew better than him about the dragon he’s been studying for years. The dragon who is standing on all fours, huffing angrily,  _ right in front of him. _

Even by Obsidian standards, this one is massive. Aphelios feels completely dwarfed by him, and he’s no short man himself. A single claw on his gigantic foot is the length of Aphelios’ calf. The dragon is almost entirely black save for two mirrored rivulets of golden-rouge scales running down his long back, and the huge spikes of deadly gold horns sprouting from his head. His eyes are ruby-red and sparkle just as brightly. His ears are long and fluffy, matching the tip of his tail, the tufts between his toes, and the luxurious ruff around his shoulders. On a dragon about one hundredth of his size, the fur might look cute. Cuddly, even. But on this behemoth, the only thing brought to mind is the deadly might of a wild-maned lion.

At least Aphelios has something nice to look at while he dies.

Except. He’s not. Dying, that is.

The dragon is just looking at him.

Aphelios can’t find his voice- can’t usually do it anyway- and shifts back a little more into the cold embrace of silver and gold. Bizarrely, he mourns the fact that his drawings are ruined from practically smashing the charcoal into them during his heart-stopping startle. He feels overwarm and freezing at the same time. He’s shaking and drawing in shallow breaths. And for a few more seconds, absolutely nothing continues to happen. The dragon is simply not killing him.

“ _ Who is this _ ?” the dragon repeats, his long, snarling mouth forming the words strangely. Aphelios catches a glimpse of teeth like spear-heads and feels even more faint than before.

“Phelos,” is what he manages to croak out. He can’t even gather enough air to clear his clenched-tight throat. “Ah-ah-phelos.” It crosses his mind that this dragon is playing with his food before he eats it. “Ah-ah...” He is so  _ dumb _ . He’s going to die and all he can say in his defense is his own name. Not even properly, at that.

The dragon takes a single step forward and sends another wave of tremors throughout Aphelios’ already well-wracked frame. He looks down at the pitiful human trembling bravely in his treasure, face so far from human Aphelios can’t possibly hope to parse the emotion present there. “ _ And what is Ah-ah-phelos doing here _ ?” he rumbles.

“Just looking. Just looking.” Aphelios jerkily grabs his ruined parchment, holding it up for the dragon to see. “Was drawing- just- t hey made me look. I _ - _ I always looked from afar, they made me- made me come in.” He didn’t really mean to throw House Lunari into the mud like that, but the mind in the face of a slow and painful death doesn’t exactly process things rationally.

The dragon takes his time looking at the parchment, then up and down Aphelios’ tiny human body. Aphelios wonders wildly if the dragon is actually thinking things over. The dragon lowers himself close to the cavern floor, so low he’s eye-level with this quivering, rough-voiced home invader. He radiates crackling heat like a lightning strike. Up close, his eyes are less like rubies and more like pools of molten metal- they swirl and dilate and shift like the masses of iron the smiths in the township pour and pound into headstrong works of art. Aphelios is fascinated, like a mouse is fascinated by the silence of an owl about to sink its soundless talons into its flesh.

“ _ I see, Ah-ah-phelos. _ ” The heat of the dragon’s breath is near-scorching. Aphelios blinks rapidly to soothe his suddenly stinging eyes. The dragon rears back up to his full, impressive height, simply considering him. “ _ I can see you took nothing. That’s good, otherwise you would already be dead _ .” He laughs, a strange, sharp bubbling noise. Like popping freshly-blown glass. “ _ Tell me now, how long have you been watching me from afar, like you said _ ?”

“Years,” Aphelios says hoarsely.

If Aphelios didn’t know any better, he’d say the dragon seems almost  _ impressed _ . He tilts his head, mane rustling with the movement. “ _ You have watched me for years and decided to come visit, did you _ ?” His tail curls up around his feet, catlike. “ _ I’m ever so flattered, Ah-ah-phelos _ .”

Great, dragons can crack jokes. Another wonderful fact Aphelios can take to his grave. “Please,” he says again, voice splintering. “Please, I meant no ha-ah- harm.” He hasn’t used his voice this much in ages. It’s starting to give out.

“ _ Oh, I know _ ,” the dragon purrs. “ _ You look like you couldn’t hurt a fly _ .”

“You’re  _ huge _ ,” is what Aphelios blurts in response.

The dragon pauses incredulously, then throws his head back in more of his loud, blown-glass laughter. “ _ You are an interesting human, Ah-ah-phelos. You know what? I’ll let you go _ .”

Aphelios thinks his mind must be messing with him, covering the moment before death with something absurd to distract from the pain of it. “ _ Ah _ ?”

The dragon takes a graceful leap clear over Aphelios’ head, landing in the middle of the sea of his hoard, a barrage of clinks and clanks assaulting Aphelios’ ears. He turns around once, twice- like a dog- and settles in a lazy curl, resting his head on his heavy-clawed feet. “ _ I’m very tired, and you’ve piqued my interest just enough for me to not kill you. So I suggest you leave, Ah-ah-phelos, before I change my mind _ .”

Aphelios has never run so fast in his life.

─── ✧ ☽ ✧ ───

The Lunari House is insane. Absolutely off their nuts. Aphelios and Alune- mostly Alune really, as Aphelios was nursing his strained voice- argued with the elders until they thought their mouths were going to peel right off their faces. But the House didn’t budge a bit.

Aphelios is going to befriend the Obsidian dragon, or die trying.

Forget the suicide mission of killing a dragon, at least  _ some  _ people had actually done it without being completely obliterated. Friendship meant  _ time _ . Time spent not pissing off a gigantic monster with unreadable moods and unpredictable whiplash whims. It’s an impossible request, and Aphelios should have refused.

_ Should _ have.

He didn’t.

He’s climbing up the mountain again, numb at this point to his own mindless loyalty to the Lunari House. They’re really all he’s ever known. His and Alune’s parents were practically the lifeblood of the House, but their mother passed shortly after childbirth, and their father died not long later in an accident. The elders raised the twins in their stead, the two of them the only real constants to each other in their ever-shifting family. It was unusual, but it was never lonely. There was always some other House member’s kid to play with, a parental figure to seek out and cry in the chest of during scary storms. “It takes a village to raise a child,” was a mantra Aphelios often heard growing up, and he believed it. Even if he’d been a quiet, obediently curious child, Alune has always been an untamable wildfire. Her mother’s daughter, everyone says. If Aphelios hadn’t given in and agreed to take up this mission, Alune probably would have shouted them all out of it eventually.

A whole village raised Aphelios, and he is going to thank their tireless work by having this mission be the absolute end of him.

The Obsidian is home right now. Aphelios saw him fly in early in the morning, before the sun could even coax the mist from the chilly morning dew. He can’t deny the dragon’s beauty- he flows through the sky like a boundless river, scales rippling along sinew like the flashing darts of quicksilver fish. He seemed happy today. Every now and then in his flight he’d twist in a languid twirl, dancing through air currents like they were nothing but a gentle breeze. It was truly a sight to behold, and Aphelios can’t believe he’s actually crazy enough to want to see it up close.

Because that’s the thing. He  _ does  _ want to do this.

He doesn’t know how to explain it. He  _ tried _ to explain it to Alune, but the words kept getting stuck in his head and all garbled up in his mouth and the significance of whatever random bit of scrambled thought ended up coming out was next to nothing. Alune knew anyway. She’s always known exactly who her brother is. She worries, of course, and Aphelios feels awful knowing just how much. But something about being the first person to ever befriend a dragon is a siren’s call to him like nothing else. He finally understands why all the men in the stories wanted to kill dragons. For a man seeking glory, the death of a beast as mighty as the dragon is a tale that will span generations, retold over and over, glory compounding on glory as the story embellishes itself with every mouth that passes it. Aphelios is not seeking that, but he gets it now.

To a man who has kept deep in his chest a desire to be himself, his  _ own  _ self, as fully as he can, the chance to be the only person who has ever done something is intoxicating. The chance to soothe the longing that, no matter how much he has learned to love the body he has, so different from all the other men around him, never quite fades. The longing to be special on his own.

The longing to be  _ Aphelios _ .

He shivers with both fright and excitement as he reaches the precipice once more.

“He-hello?” Aphelios calls tentatively into the cavern, listening to the walls mock his stutter amongst themselves. “Sir dragon?”

“ _ Ah-ah-phelos _ ?” comes the curious, rumbling reply from deep within. “ _ Come to test your luck once more _ ?”

“Yes,” Aphelios manages, and takes a single step forward, straining his ears for the sound of rushing wind, a sign of impending doom. Sensing nothing of the sort, he strolls in with as much false confidence as he can muster. His fingers dance nervously along the handles of the knives strapped to his thigh. The only other things he’s brought with him are several long sheaves of parchment and a pocketful of charcoal sticks, both in a canvas shoulder-bag.

The Obsidian is almost exactly as Aphelios left him days ago, slung languidly across his vast hoard. He lifts his head as Aphelios blooms into view, the little light that seeps in from the cave’s entrance shifting across his thinly handsome features. The cave is noticeably warmer with the dragon inside of it, breathing slow and heavy, a lazy, monolithic furnace. “ _ It’s nice to see you _ ,” the dragon purrs, slinking down his mountain of gold to rest at eye level again. Coins murmur against his smooth scales like rushing water. “ _ How will you entertain me today, Ah-ah-phelos _ ?”

“I am- am  _ Aphelios _ .” He really hopes the dragon won’t take offense to being corrected. “I have a- I stutter.” He clears his throat, suddenly dry from the heat. “I apologize.”

“ _ Ohhhh, Aphelios, _ ” the dragon drawls, the vowels stretching like taffy-molten iron. If he had a human mouth, he’d surely be smirking, eyes half-lidded and teasing. “ _ A beautiful name for a beautiful boy _ .”

Aphelios colours, stomach twisting in a bizarre mix of embarrassment and flattery. He shoves the rising impulse to flee back down. “What’s you- your name, sir dragon?”

The dragon stretches, seemingly thinking it over. He flicks the end of his tail up to his front claws and buries them in the coarse fur there, combing through it methodically. “ _ Sett _ ,” he finally answers, the  _ t _ ’s clicking against his sharp teeth. “ _ Not many have asked _ .”

“Do you get many visit- visitors?” Aphelios asks stupidly, hands clutching at the strap of the bag slung across his chest.

Sett laughs. “ _ None as curious nor as pretty as you, Aphelios _ .” He chuckles again at the blush blossoming across Aphelios’ cheeks like poppies. “ _ Oh, you are fun. Tell me now, what brings you here today _ ?”

Aphelios fumbles in his canvas bag, wordlessly holding up his parchment and charcoal for Sett to recognize. His knees still feel weak, but the longer he stays in Sett’s presence, the less they shake. Sett seems pleased with this, puffing out his chest and settling upright, groomed tail tucked neatly around his feet. His hands? Aphelios realizes he has no idea what to call them. “Paws” seems almost infantilizing to a behemoth like him.

“Let me see your- feet,” Aphelios says, gesturing towards them with a willow stick. It already powders his fingertips with its soft soot. He carefully sits down. “Draw those first.”

Sett is practically preening, splaying his impressive claws on the cave floor mere inches away from Aphelios, who tries to hide his free hand’s flinch toward his knives. His charcoal still scribbles steadily across the parchment. “ _ Do I scare you, Aphelios _ ?”

“Of course you- you do,” Aphelios answers carefully, adrenaline making him feel like he has lightning bugs for blood. It’s taking everything in him to sit still and keep drawing. “I should be dead by now.”

Sett huffs proudly, blasting poor Aphelios like a bellows. “ _ Yes, you should be very grateful to me. I think you owe me for sparing your life, and allowing you so close on top of that _ .”

Something like dread drips down the back of Aphelios’ throat. “What do- do you pro- propose?”

“ _ Find me a mate _ ,” is both the immediate answer and the one that Aphelios was least expecting. He’s so shocked he completely loses his voice for a moment, charcoal smudging down his pointer finger as his grip goes slack.

“A m-m-mate?  _ I _ find a  _ mate _ for- for  _ you _ ?”

Sett clacks a single formidable talon on the cavern floor. It echoes sharp and threatening around his den. “ _ You and your kin observe us, don’t you? Find me a suitable mate and consider your debt covered _ .”

Aphelios is beyond shocked. So much has completely unraveled his worldview lately that he feels nothing will ever surprise him again. “Alright,” he agrees, because he doesn’t have a choice, and wonders how deep he can dig his grave before his finally gets to die in it. He finishes his drawing a little more hastily than he means to, and bids Sett a good evening, bowing profusely in thanks for letting him live another day.

When Aphelios sleeps that night he dreams of distant voices, soft and low, and big strong hands roaming across his body. He dreams of running through fire, not a lick of it burning his bared skin, laughing and laughing and  _ laughing _ . His chest swells with smokey air. He feels so free. He thinks if he jumped, he could fly, just like Sett, twisting and turning and finally,  _ finally _ , the hands are touching him where he wants them to, the voice is pressed into his hair and it’s telling him he’s beautiful. Soft and low, burning heat, he is beautiful the way he already is.

When Aphelios wakes, his chest feels tight, and he doesn’t remember why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on twitter @apollyonights
> 
> i hope you've enjoyed this so far! i meant for it to be a PWP one-shot but then my slow-burn brain took over,, oopsies
> 
> kudos and comments are really appreciated!


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